MEMPHIS – With a wink and a chuckle Wednesday, Warriors Coach Don Nelson chalked up his team’s marvelously effective technique for stopping Houston Rockets center Yao Ming to a “heck of a good game plan” drawn up by none other than himself.

All joking aside, what made the Warriors’ 110-99 victory over the host Rockets especially impressive was this: As even Nelson conceded, the plan shouldn’t have worked – not with Al Harrington’s shot lurching farther off-target than a ceremonial first pitch from Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory.

“If you were to tell me Harrington was going to go 4 for 17, I’d say we don’t win, because part of my strategy was he had to have a good game,” Nelson said. “He had to really stretch the defense and make threes, and he didn’t.”

That the Warriors won was testament to the 6-foot-9 Harrington’s persistence on defense, where he helped limit the 7-6 Yao to four shots and nine points. But even that sterling effort can’t hide the problems Harrington has had helping ball meet basket of late.

Over his past four games – three of which he has started at center instead of at power forward in Nelson’s resurrected small-ball scheme – Harrington has converted 13 of 44 shots from the floor (29.5 percent).

As befits a guy who ranks sixth in the league in three-point shooting at 43.9 percent, Harrington is shooting better from deep in this four-game stretch (31.3 percent). In the paint, however, his shots have found nothing but unkind iron.

While the Warriors pursued Harrington last summer and into this season, the hope was that he would have the ability to score from the perimeter and give Nelson another credible post-up weapon.

But Wednesday, Harrington went a combined 1 for 7 on layups and tip-in attempts and also missed a five-foot hook shot. In addition to the tip-in, his three other makes came on a pair of three-pointers and an 18-foot jumper.

Nelson limited Harrington’s minutes in games last week against San Antonio and Phoenix – 18 and 22, respectively – and said later that Harrington needed to be more aggressive in the offense.

“He goes through periods of time where, if I don’t call a play for him, he doesn’t find a way to be involved,” Nelson said. “All good players find a way to be involved, and I’m counting on him to be involved. But sometimes he just forgets. But with the smaller lineup, he should be involved in every play. We want him to be.”

Harrington said that even 2 1/2 months after arriving via the Warriors’ eight-player trade with the Indiana Pacers, the freedom, and at times free-form nature, of Nelson’s system still takes some getting used to.

“My whole career, I’ve always been in a structured game in terms of what we’re trying to do out there,” Harrington said. “(Nelson) is trying to get me to be more aggressive in situations where I can be more unpredictable.

“Sometimes I don’t know where he wants me to go. Sometimes when he’s telling me to attack, I think I should give it to Baron (Davis) and let us run something. Other times, when I attack, he wants me to run through something else.

“Right now, I’ve got (seven) games and the playoffs to figure it out.”

The Warriors have one game left in Texas during the regular season – Saturday in San Antonio – but they’ve already made a mark in that state this season. Golden State has split four road games with the Rockets, Spurs and Dallas Mavericks, while the rest of the NBA has gone 22-84 in those teams’ home arenas.